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I Promise.....
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China pt II
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To find freedom in a country full of chains
requires the skill of a pick pocket...
Pulling burdens from shoulders and hips
to reveal the soft touch
that only innocence
and laughter may bring.

Has all this been forgotten
in the dust of your dead and dying?
Has 5000 years of bodies,
crushed into the earth
beneath each new generation,
made you ignore your future?
or your past?

Each day...
We are eating your ancestors
and drinking the blood of your young!

Have I said too much already?

Not for those that know the depths of oceans
or have seen birds circling the stars.

I want you back!
I need to smell your sickness again
and step over children
with jobs to collect our sanity
in cupped hands and bowls of tin.

China...

A land where life is lived in moments
and the food will always taste
of wood or metal.
I have seen this before
and will return until my eyes bulge with reverence
and my ears sing the songs of blind men.

This time...

I promise to speak to you!
My words, you may not know
but still, to be rarer than silence
is a mistake I will not repeat.
This is better for us,
to communicate even without understanding.
To walk through streets of glass and brick,
where behind walls, treasures are kept
from those that made them
and women sell their bodies
for pieces of your soul.

This time will be different...

I promise!

I will not again, awaken each day,
surrounded by a city of strangers
but instead, laugh and turn to replace them with you.
Our only dance will be with hands held high
and the spirits and smoke of nations far away
will not replace you now.

This time your gifts are for me alone
and I will receive them.

I will wrap you in silks
and brush the knots from your hair.
You will welcome me with incense
and lead me to the tops of mountains...

Summits that only wait
for feet to make them real.

This time, we will be together...

I promise!

~Ian Sands '05